Tonight, surrounded by the walls of a prison,
there is a traveller who is hugging his sorrow.
Many years wandering the underworld
bringing misfortune to other beings
only to fall into the hands of law
one winter night, wrists in handcuffs.
All fantasies shattered:
Family, friends, dear lover,
freedom is far away.
Now sitting behind barbed wire, hugging his knees
looking at the sky, the earth, the clouds
a bird’s wing like a far-fetched dream.
Every day, counting the time,
tears a page off the calendar with stinging pain.
Thirty-year sentence.
How many pages are left for an exile?
Day by day, an obscure yearning:
Mom, Dad, times when he was free.
Miss every cup of water, every bowl of rice
Recall parents’ scolding, the whip marks on skin.
Back then, he didn’t understand, was resentful.
Now that he does, the past is immensely far away.
Refused to hear parents’ advice,
argued against their words to rot in jail.
Wrote this poem hastily in the night,
sent back to his homeland to repent.
The underworld promises a life of adventure,
but in the hands of law, life withers, body burns
to the white bones.

Chu Ngoc Tu Nguyen is a 48-year-old Vietnamese poet who has been incarcerated in Michigan since 1999. He hopes that his poems, written in Vietnamese and translated into English, can help people in the free world understand the struggle of the foreigner who is locked up in a foreign land. He is scheduled for release in 2030.

Phạm Thu Uyên majors in Critical Ethnic Studies at Kalamazoo College. She writes and does text/image works at precioussummer.wordpress.com.

In our home we brewed ginseng tea to battle unnamed / diseases. We held hands with health. I was never good at it, of course: / always too bitter, oversteeped. Always the universe mocking me / from the sidelines.

On the screen, an old man is dying in his bed. / The adults are talking / loudly, two feet away from each other. / From their voices, I can tell their hatred / for that old man, a thin blanket to his chin.

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